Five Times Sam Wished Her Life Was Different
by Lirael Alpha Orionis
Summary: Five times Sam wished her life was different. One possible interpretation of her story.


5.

Sam almost always got ready for missions alone. Men and women had separate locker rooms at the SGC, and since during the normal course of operations only one team gated out at a time, she usually had the place to herself. Sometimes when several teams were working together, or two teams were leaving shortly one after another, there might be a couple of other women gearing up too. Sam liked it when that happened. It was strange knowing the rest of her team got ready without her. It felt like she was missing out on something. She wondered what they said and the rituals they shared. They always waited for her, or she them, before going to the gate room, but it wasn't the same. Not that she wanted to get ready with the men, necessarily, but company would be nice. Someone to chat to, or make jokes with, or talk to about the planet they were visiting and take bets on what weird things would happen this time. It got lonely in the women's locker room. At first she'd been delighted by the privacy, when she was still new and a bit nervous and wanted her time gearing up to be spent in calm preparation, making sure everything was perfect. But when she'd adapted and getting ready became routine, she wished she had someone with whom to share the routine. The locker room was very much "her space" and "her time" and mostly that was great, but sometimes, as the Colonel would put it, it plain sucked.

4.

Sam Carter wasn't a hugger, in that it wasn't natural for her to go around hugging people. Usually this was okay with her; she liked defying gender norms and being a hugger was generally seen as a feminine thing to do. But not being a touchy person could be hard, like when you needed a hug and then you didn't know how to start it. Sam never initiated hugging so she tended to be grateful when someone else did. As soon as they moved toward her and reached out, she engaged with enthusiasm. But she could never ask for a hug when she needed one and she couldn't offer one to people in need. She wished she knew how to be one of those people. People who hugged. But there was something in her that stopped her from reaching out. She didn't know why. She was never sure if it was something inherent in her nature that she should learn to accept or something flawed about her that she should be working to change. Not that the Air Force needed huggy people, hardly ever, but sometimes when she wasn't being Major Carter and she was just being Sam, she thought it would be nice to be a hugger. And sometimes she thought it was just necessary. Maybe if she was more of a hugger she wouldn't always be coming home to an empty house.

3.

Sam hit the ground. Hard. She was dirty and tired and thirsty and the only thing keeping her going was the adrenaline racing around her body, a reaction to being fired at by the Jaffa currently converging on their position. She rolled over and came up behind the small incline over which she'd dived, aiming and firing with a precision that masked her desperate determination to be alive. Her body ached all over and she was pretty sure she would be in the infirmary for a week after this because it felt like she'd torn something important in her knee and her arm was covered in infected scrapes from where she had tripped down a ravine yesterday. She fired round after round, the P90 jarring her shoulder as she mentally prepared to reload. Her head hurt with the sounds and smells of gunfire and staff blasts. She ducked and reloaded, her injured knee pressing into the ground in a way that hurt. They weren't even doing anything important, like freeing an enslaved people or destroying valuable Gou'uld resources. No, they had been caught on a routine mission by a group of Jaffa, also on a routine mission, and it was bad timing all around. The Jaffa had recognized them, insults were thrown, everyone attempted to take prisoners, and it had turned into a no-holds-barred firefight in the forest. As Sam gritted her teeth and exposed her upper body over the incline to begin firing again, she fully wished in that moment that she'd chosen a career as a scientist where she could be sitting in a desk chair right now working out theoretical problems with a computer and a whiteboard, and where her biggest problem would be carpel tunnel syndrome from spending too much time writing her book.

2.

Sam Carter didn't want to be in love with Colonel Jack O'Neill. The Za'tarc business this year had dragged everything out into the open, which initially had made it all the more unbearable that she couldn't be with him, knowing he felt the same way. That feeling quickly mellowed though, and it turned out the testing had made the situation infinitely more bearable, not less, because now she knew with certainty how he felt and he knew how she felt and it made her feel less alone. She wasn't in this by herself anymore, they were in it together. But even though they were in it together, they weren't actually together. Sam was in love with someone she couldn't be with and she'd never experienced that pain before. It was strong. She wanted to feel his kiss and his body and the weight of him on her, pressing her into the mattress or leaning against her as they watched TV. She wanted him around all the time, wanted to be with him, and it just wasn't going to happen. Sometimes she wished with all her heart that she wasn't in love with him because then she'd be free to be in love with someone else. Someone she could take to her bed and the grocery store and everywhere in between. She didn't know who this someone else was, but she was sure that if she wasn't in love with the Colonel, she would be in love with this other person. She didn't want life to be just bearable. She wanted it to be joyfully, beautifully liveable.

1.

Sam wished she was still in love with Jack O'Neill. With all her heart she wished she loved him as she had three years ago after the Za'tarc testing, or six years ago with tender and buzzing new feelings. It would be so much easier if she still loved him because it would give her an excuse to break up with Pete. She didn't want to be dating Pete, didn't want to be his fiancée, but she couldn't think of a reason to end it. Couldn't think of something meaningful and profound to tell him when she broke it off. Being in love with another man would at least be something to say. But it would be a lie. Because even before she'd started dating Pete, her feelings toward the Colonel had not been what they once were. She loved him, yes. But she wasn't in love with him, not anymore. She didn't know why or when specifically the change had happened, only that it had.

Wishing she still loved him wasn't just about breaking up with Pete. It was also about her life; her identity. She'd been in love with him for so long that its absence left her feeling lost. It had become so much a part of her and now that it was gone she didn't feel like herself anymore. She didn't know who she was if she wasn't in love with Jack O'Neill, as much as the feminist part of her hated to admit it. The freedom to build her personal life the way she'd wanted to for years was bewildering. She could date anyone, fall in love, be emotionally intimate, and physically too. All of those things felt like such a distant memory that she didn't know what to do with them. Being in love with someone she could never have was excruciating, but it was also safe. There was no emotional vulnerability, no potentially-awkward first sex, no dealing with the issues of living a life with someone. Just the bliss of anticipation.

So wishing she was still in love with Jack was about Pete and it was about herself, but it was also, and mostly, about Jack O'Neill. She felt like she'd betrayed him. They'd made an unspoken vow to wait for each other. She knew he still loved her and the guilt at not loving him back was crippling. She wanted to love him for his sake, but she couldn't. And she didn't know how to tell him, given that they'd never said anything in the first place. To break an unacknowledged promise is almost impossible because it requires speaking of something that was never spoken and in many ways seems almost not to exist. She wanted to tell him, but she couldn't find the words. And she felt as awful as she did free.


End file.
